Roland Emmerich
Stargate

Literally a star gate, this science fiction film by Roland Emmerich is intriguing in various aspects.

Firstly, the viewer is introduced to an alternative scientist who claims that the pyramids of Giza were not built by the Fourth Dynasty, suggesting this by the fact that there is no type of writing or carvings on the walls inside, unlike the other pyramids and other Egyptian buildings. Furthermore, geological surveys on the erosion of the Sphinx would predate it significantly compared to the commonly accepted age (I also find interesting the leonine shape linking it to the precessional age of Leo). However, the scientist is mocked, and everyone thinks he is a lunatic who believes in Martians, basically a conspiracy theorist-denialist ahead of his time in the '90s.

The military, however, gives him credit by involving him in a super-secret project that involves deciphering symbols to activate a space-time portal. It is curious that the portal works through symbols; let's remember that the meaning of the term symbol is literally “to put together,” “to unite.”

We then learn that an alien driving a flying pyramid came to Earth in prehistoric times in search of immortality; having found it by exploiting the physical bodies of men, he became the great civilizer, as well as the sole omnipotent god. Echoes of the Watchers from Enochian memory, bringers of civilization and sacred sciences, intertwine with the concept of monotheism, first experienced by Akhenaten, then fully introduced by Moses, as everyone learned in catechism, and later became dominant in the age of Pisces. Obviously, in this film, everything is served in a Hollywood-style, the dialogues are shallow, and action scenes dominate. A Kurt Russell with perfect marine hairstyles adds extra value to the whole, and the Egypt-tech setting is well impressed thanks to the flying pyramids, mechanical Anubi guards, and the effeminate gray pharaoh alien, almost androgynous.

The take is decidedly materialistic and in line with the paleo-astronautics trend, which claims that Earth was visited numerous times in antiquity by extraterrestrials superior to us from a technological point of view and thus mistaken for gods. In recent years, these themes are very fashionable thanks to authors like Mauro Biglino and the late Zacharia Sitchin.

The danger of becoming attached to these theories lies in believing that the ability and skills to do great things, knowledge, and civilization are something alien to man, brought by others and granted by grace, perhaps only in case one obeys without question. By being slaves, like the natives of the planet where, in the film, the alien pyramid pilot has taken refuge, who forbids men from knowing their true history.

Better to challenge certain “gods” than to become zombies and end up worse than Eddie from Iron Maiden, who in the “Powerslave” version would be perfect for this film.